Pierre Carrier-Belleuse

Until the 1870s, Montmartre, the section of Paris best remembered as the home of the Impressionists, Cubists, and other members of the avant-garde, was a sleepy little village spotted with windmills. However, as the city expanded in the late nineteenth century, Montmartre was incorporated into its limits, and soon became the hub of Parisian nightlife.

In 1881, the famed Moulin Rouge opened its doors, delighting its customers with operettas, can-can girls, and dancers. The success of the Moulin Rouge inspired a number of music halls and cafés to spring up, including the Caran d'Ache, the Mirliton, and the infamous Folies-Bergère, and before long the pleasures available there attracted Parisians from all walks of life: workers, artists, the middle class, the demi-mondaine, and aristocrats mingled together in Montmartre's cabarets and dance halls.

Eventually, the neighborhood's reputation for debauchery and delight inspired painters and writers alike to take up residence there and immortalize its visitors and residents in pictures and words. Among these was Pierre Carrier-Belleuse, the son of the famed artist Albert Carrier-Belleuse.

The versatile painter Pierre Carrier-Belleuse grew successful at painting and drawing under the hand of his famous father. Pierre also studied under Cabanel and Galland at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and debuted at the Paris Salon in 1875. He mastered pastels, a difficult medium only recently revived by the Impressionist school, rendering genre works, landscapes, historical subjects and the ballet.

Other Parisian venues in which he exhibited included the Society of French Artists in 1888 and the National Society of Fine Arts from 1893-1911. He received an honorable mention for his work in 1887, and a silver medal at the Exposition Universelle in 1889.